Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Ever wanted to find out which instruments are playing in a music composition or an orchestra? What tune the violin is playing or the guitar or the drums? Ever fancy how the entire orchestra would sound if certain instruments are missing? Well now you can.

Notation Player is a free program that can turn music files (.mid, .kar) into sheet music that you can view on the screen while the notes play. You can play the entire bunch of instruments at once or play only selected ones. You can even print out the sheets so that you can play it yourself. This is a wonderful tool for both professional and practicing musicians.

Unfortunately, I’m neither so I can’t give you a detailed review of what this application can do and what it cannot. Just watching the music come alive as shapes and notations on a sheet was enough to get me hooked. But one thing I was able to notice that it’s possible to modify the music by either transcribing the tracks or adding your own clefs and keys to the sheet. You can even save the music.

The program’s website has a large collection of MIDI files as samples for you to try out. And there is always Google.